5 Questions With We Came As Romans: Creating Self-Titled Album, Writing New Material + More

We Came As Romans recently unveiled plans for a North American tour with Parkway Drive. We caught up with vocalists Kyle Pavone and Dave Stephens to talk about their latest album, We Came As Romans. We also spoke about some changes Pavone made to his hair and what the rest of the year has in store for the band, which happens to involve working on new music. Check out our interview with We Came As Romans members Kyle Pavone and Dave Stephens below:

What made you decide to have your latest album be self-titled considering it's the fourth studio disc in your catalog?

Kyle Pavone: We had a completely different writing experience writing this one. Instead of doing this on the road, we decided to just take time by ourselves and figure out how to come up with our own sound. We all came together and we got pretty close during that record, every other name didn’t sound right and we thought calling it self-titled because we are a unit and we really pulled together as a unit.

Did both of you share the lyrical writing responsibilities and when writing were there specific topics you kept going back to in particular?

Dave Stephens: Yeah, everyone contributed in one way or another more so than on our last records. It’s hard to say if there’s a big theme on the record because every song is so different, lyrically, too. Josh [Moore] and I were both kind of going through hardships – Kyle does a lot of the programming but Josh and I do a lot of the lyrics and him and I were in the same place mentally, just going through some rough times.

How was the overall recording process for you guys?

DS: It was tough, really tough. We were with [producer] David Bendeth, he’s a stickler and he wants everything to be perfect and it’s what we needed. It wasn’t an enjoyable experience but I’m glad to have had it.

KP: Yeah it was definitely a lot different just because we took a completely different route on writing songs and we really focused on structure and trying a completely different sound than what we’re used to. It was difficult but in the end we’re really happy with the sound we came out with.

We Came As Romans fans are diehard. Kyle you’re blond now. Do fans question you about your hair color change?

KP: All the time. It’s something I’ve wanted to do it last summer and I never really got around to doing it and they wanted me to do it the very bad way with the L’Oreal dye and what not and I was like, “I’m not going to do that.”

DS: I talked him out of it, it was our bassist Andy [Glass] that wanted him to do it with the cheap stuff and I was like, “Dude you might actually light your hair on fire using that stuff.”

What does 2016 have in store for We Came As Romans?

DS: We have South America and Mexico in August. We’re going to tour and write and record more, around this time in the cycle we always start brainstorming for the next one. I think more so than ever we have a really good idea of what direction we want to go with the next one and sometimes that doesn’t happen until a few months into the writing process. This time around I think we all know where we want to take it.

Our thanks to Dave Stephens and Kyle Pavone of We Came As Romans for the interview. Check out a full list of tour dates the band has with Parkway Drive here.